Mental Maladjustment in the East African

Abstract

Relatively little is yet known of the incidence or nature of mental disorder in Africans. The literature on African psychiatry is not extensive and, although a wealth of anthropological and sociological work has given us an idea of the cultural and physical background of the African, we are still much in the dark as to how these factors influence his personality and what bearing they may have upon mental illness. A number of studies of patients in African Mental Hospitals have been made by various writers and diagnostic classifications have been attempted. Most writers agree that it is rare to find any great degree of similarity between the various types of mental disorder in Africa and those found in the higher developed western countries. Most of the work in this field has been summarized by Carothers (1954). My aim in this paper is to give a rough idea of the African background, to speculate on various aspects of the African personality in the light of present knowledge, and to try and reflect these speculations by description of the various types of insanity that are encountered in a mental hospital in Tanganyika. Some of the differences in the nature and aetiology of these disorders, compared with those most common in the home country, will be discussed. My remarks are, of course, confined to Tanganyika and if I inadvertently use the term “the African” I refer to the native of Tanganyika whom I have studied for the past eight years and who compose the bulk of the patients in hospital.